Following are 2
emails from Joe Quigley, the first sent Sunday,
February 10, & the second sent Monday, February
11. The editorial Joe refers to is also available on
the Daily
Oklahoman website
UPDATE: New email from Joe Quigley added! (Scroll to
bottom)
(Posted
2-12-02, UPDATED 2-13-02)
(2-10-02) this was the
lead editorial in the sunday Oklahoman. I just had to
respond.
My letter follows
joe
Oklahoman Editorial: Another False Notion
2002-02-10
Endorsing homosexual adoption last week, the American
Academy of Pediatrics said homosexual couples can
provide children with the loving, emotionally healthy
life they need and urged its 55,000 members to
actively support measures allowing homosexual couples
to adopt children.
Specifically, the
academy said its members should focus on helping
homosexual "co-parents" gain legally
protected parental rights.
The academy says as
many as 9 million children in the U.S. have at least
one homosexual parent and that each child should have
two parents, even of the same sex, in case of a
parent's unemployment, death or incapacitation.
Unfortunately, the
effort is another front in a larger fight to accord
legal rights and benefits to a behavior many
Americans consider dysfunctional and sinful. The
logic: Homosexuals can be suitable parents, so
homosexuals are entitled to the same legal rights and
monetary benefits as heterosexual parents.
As to the premise of
the argument, we wonder how many rank-and-file
pediatricians embrace the view of their national
organization. It's hard to imagine many here in
Oklahoma being in agreement.
Homosexual activists
say two men or two women can be good parents, no
different than heterosexual parents. Yet that notion
runs counter to intrinsic values of human behavior.
Two men can't
produce offspring; neither can two women. God
designed it that way. So, logically and inherently,
parenting also is designed to be performed by a
father and a mother, each contributing to a child's
development in ways unique to their genders.
We're not shocked
the academy doesn't buy into this. Science usually
takes a pass on the Creator and couldn't be expected
to put much stock in the Creator's designs.
This isn't to say
homosexuals can't love children, just that parenting
is a job for a father and a mother.
The battle over
rights and benefits is political, but it shouldn't be
based on the false notion that it doesn't matter
whether the parents are homosexual or heterosexual.
<< Dear Editor
Once again, in an attempt to
appeal to fear rather than reason, in your editorial
of Sunday, February 10 ( Another False Notion) you
reduced a class of people to a behavior. This makes
it easier to ignore that Gay and Lesbian people are
in many ways similar to all other people. What makes
this appeal even more effective is that you do not
define "behavior", but rather, in using an
undefined term, leave it up to the individual reader
to imagine what this might be, and as you cannot
discribe it, you lead people to believe that they
need to imagine something horrendous and hideous.
Granted there are some Gay and Lesbian people who
engage in objectionable behavior, just as some
heterosexuals engage in objectionable behavior, but
you cannot paint everyone with your usual broad brush.
In a state that leads most other states in child
abuse, offspring murder, abandoned babies and poor
health care and poverty of children all at the hands
of heterosexual parents, a child would be rather
lucky to have two loving parents, Gay or Straight.
Yet, for some reason, widely suspected to be of a
personal nature, you choose to poisen the minds of
your readers, and in so doing turn the unity of this
state after the Murrah building tragedy and the unity
of this country after the September 11 attack into
division. One would think that your paper, the "State
Paper", would do what it could to bring us
together as Oklahomans and Americans and give up the
old tactics and prejudices based on stereotypes that
do nothing other than turn us against each other.
Your emotional appeal ignores studies and facts
which could weaken your opinion and arguments in
favor of scare tactics that insult the intelligence
of your readers. Children do need loving parents,
preferably two, but who are you to limit the
opportunities for any child because you have a
personal bias and a large platform in which to
promote it?
Joseph M Quigley
620 NW 19
Oklahoma City 73102
521-0215 >>
(2-11-02) I received
this today from the Oklahoman.
Needless to say I responded
(my response follows)
joe quigley
JMcReynolds@Oklahoman.com
We want to publish responses to the Feb. 10
editorial, and yours was the first to arrive.
However, I find your letter difficult to follow and
unfocused. I invite you to try again with more focus.
I don't usually respond to letter writers like this,
but I wanted to give you a chance rather than
rejecting your letter outright.
In the third paragraph of your letter, you use the
phrase "widely suspected to be of a personal
nature." What does this mean? Who are you
talking about? Also, I fail to see what the Murrah
bombing and the Sept. 11 attacks have to do with this
topic. The issue is the suitability of homosexuals to
be adoptive parents. Period. The Oklahoman's role in
state unity is irrelevant to this topic. Your low
opinion of this editorial page is also irrelevant.
Our readers don't care what you think of this
newspaper; they want to know what you think about
this particular issue.
Perhaps you need to re-read the editorial and respond
directly to the statements made within. Leave out all
of the sidebars. If you do so, we'll give it serious
consideration for publication.
J.E. McReynolds
Your Views editor
The Oklahoman
editor
The constant sniping at Gay and Lesbian People is a
matter related to the unity of US as a country and a
state.
Gay and Lesbian People exhibited heroic and
truly American behavior in both the instance of the
Murrah Building and September 11, although your paper
chose to remain conspicuously silent in this regard
on both occasions.
Where these people do as all other
people do, you choose to ignore that, but when you
are against something that is positive about them,
you write in generality and vagueness.
This sets up an unnecessary division
among the people of Oklahoma. And, this is exactly
the intent and effect of the editorial.
Your reducing of people to a
"behavior" and then juxtaposing the
condemnation of a behavior with that of a people is
irrelevant to your topic, yet you did just that.
Further, as far as your statement "The
issue is the suitability of homosexuals to be
adoptive parents", what does your editorial
about this have to do with a behavior? Why did you
not quote the actual report along with the statistics
upon which it was based.
Not once in the (as you spelled it on your website)
EDITIORAL did you address PEOPLE, the Homosexual
parents you endeavored to condemn.
As far as the statement of mine,
"widely suspected to be of a personal nature",
your readers actually have a depth of intelligence
you, for some reason choose to ignore, that leads
many to believe, not only in light of the frequency
of your editorials condemning Oklahomans, but in your
verbal gymnastics to do so, that it is an obsession
that must have at its root far more than civic
mindedness.
Otherwise, you would present the
facts as they exist, and deal with people as people
allowing your intellegent readers to arrive at a
proper, uncoerced conclusion.
I actually do appreciate
your personal attention to my letter, but be assured
that I have read your paper, both the daily and
sunday editions, every day since I arrived in this
wonderful state of Oklahoma some nine years ago, and
have on many occasions seen letters which question
the editorals and the paper itself.
What I have not seen is the
balance needed to present a topic such as this
without an unnecessary amount of bias and
misrepresentation.
Gays and Lesbians as a
people make suitable parents because they are PEOPLE,
and are, by and large, a loving caring people at that.
Condemn behavior if you
will, but stop equating Gay and Lesbian people solely
with behavior.
Perhaps, the paper and
by extension the readers could benefit by your
allowing the occasional apologetic in favor of and in
fairness to Gay and Lesbian people, instead of the
endless stream of staff and guest editorials,
leaving us with only the hope that letters exposing
the other side, the other view have a chance of being
published.
As the "State Paper" I
would think you would have the obligation under that
title to represent the state and ALL its people,
rather than reserving some as targets for
misinformation when there is so much more to them as
people.
If you choose to publish, or not, that
is not for me to demand, or expect. That is your
editorial perogative.
Perhaps, as a first, you could publish My
letter, your e-mail, and my response to it so that
your readers may see that there may be a possibility
of dialogue with the consistently silenced.
Joseph M. Quigley
(a real person who does not exhibit the assumed
behaviors)
620 NW 19
Oklahoma City 73103
521-0215
(2-12-02)
I received this
from the Oklahoman today, and in my faulty Taurean
fashion could not let it go without a word in
response.
<< In a message dated 2/12/02 9:50:17 AM, JMcReynolds@Oklahoman.com writes:
It's obvious you don't want a letter published. I
don't have time to spar with you or read anything of
what you wrote below other than the first few lines.
I gave you a second chance and you didn't take it.
>>
my response
Actually, the desire is not wanting a letter to go
unpublished, but, rather to simply have the one I
wrote published.
I appreciate the personal interest, but people to
whom I have shown my letter have found it to the
point and related to the topic as presented in
Sunday's Oklahoman.
There was no "sparring" taking place
whatsoever, but not reading beyond the first few
lines does show a lack of desire for dialogue in
order to gain understanding.
Was there a specific content that
you desire and to which you want me to
affix my name?
Joseph Quigley
620 NW 19
Oklahoma City 73102
521-0215
Previous
postings from Joe Quigley:
